All MSM Pundits Are Whores For Power Like Hannity; He’s Just Honest About It

I just watched a CNN segment featuring Republican and Democratic panelists reacting with shock and astonishment over the news that Sean Hannity appeared on stage in support of President Trump during a campaign rally. That’s right, Sean Hannity is politically biased. I’ll wait for you to catch your breath.

“It was completely inappropriate,” sputtered panelist Tara Setmeyer about the rally. “They’re living in another world over there. It was like a college homecoming. They’re talking about, you know, owning the libs, and how the faces of the left-wing media, what we’re going to look like on Wednesday morning.”

We. On a panel discussing how shocking and appalling it is for media figures to openly involve themselves in partisan political agendas, a CNN staff political commentator said “we” when referring to the “left-wing media” Trump and his sycophants like Hannity attack. Leaving aside the impressive feat of social engineering which has allowed a warmongering, Wall Street-coddling corporate propaganda firm like CNN to refer to itself as “left-wing”, it is worth noting that Setmeyer said this, and that she said it because the staff of both Fox and CNN are acutely aware of their respective partisan biases.

Setmeyer is acknowledging that the bias is there, but essentially just arguing that it’s wrong to cross the line into blatantly acknowledging it. In effect, she is making the argument that it’s better for mass media firms to tacitly lie to their audiences by pretending to some extent that they are unbiased and impartial.

Mixed in with all the chatter about the US midterms is a cloud of outrage from the media class over Hannity’s supposed transgression.

“Still can’t get over Hannity denying he would be on stage the whole day, getting brought up by Trump, and then pointing to actual news reporters and calling them fake,” tweeted Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.

“Sean Hannity is now on stage at the Trump rally repeating Trump’s midterm campaign slogan, ‘Promises made, promises kept,'” tweeted NBC’s Christina Wilkie. “Hannity, earlier today: ‘To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President.'”

“Sean Hannity is to journalism what Donald Trump is to conservatism,” tweeted Hannity’s fellow Iraq war cheerleader Max Boot.

Another senior Fox News employee told CNN that “People throughout the company think a new line was crossed.”

“FOX News does not condone any talent participating in campaign events,” said a Fox News spokesperson in a statement. “We have an extraordinary team of journalists helming our coverage tonight and we are extremely proud of their work. This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.”

Fox’s statement was weird for a couple of reasons, one of them being that Sean Hannity has already campaigned for two Republican candidates this year. Fox’s Jeanine Pirro, who appeared with Hannity at the rally, has also been actively participating in paid campaign events.

And why shouldn’t they? Hannity and Pirro are both unscrupulous whores for the Republican Party and everyone knows it; the only difference is that they’re straightforward about it and don’t try to hide their servitude the way other pundits and reporters generally do. The world would be better off if all journalists and commentators stopped pretending to be impartial arbiters of objective reality and admitted that they are all biased and they all have an agenda. Every single one of them, without a single solitary exception.

All reporters have an agenda. For most, that agenda is to make money and become prestigious in a profession which puts them in touch with people who wield immense power. For others, the agenda is to bring truth to the masses, hold power to account, and/or help make the world a better place in some way. But in both cases there is an agenda, and in both cases their audiences should be made aware of that agenda.

My belief in this principle is the reason I wear my biases and agendas on my sleeve so openly. On the very rare occasions that anyone bothers to play Captain Obvious and accuse me of bias or pushing an agenda I just say, “Yeah, no shit.” I’m a hard left critic of US-centralized imperialism and I’d like to see the end of the western unelected power establishment before they get us all killed by war or ecocide; if I were to try and mask that in the illusion of impartiality I’d be deceiving and manipulating my readers.

I truly believe we’d all be much better off if everyone in news media did this, rather than trying to dishonestly present an illusion of impartiality that they’ve never actually had. People are able to inform themselves far more effectively of what’s going on when they are aware of the biases and agendas of the sources giving them the information.

But that of course is precisely why this doesn’t happen, and I suspect it’s the reason for the feigned outrage over Sean Hannity’s open bias as well. In order to effectively sell narratives about what’s going on in the world to the public, the mass media needs to also sell the illusion that the talking heads it puts forward are neutral, fair and balanced conveyors of objective fact. As the anonymous Fox News employee said, “a new line was crossed” when the network’s most popular face took a step toward shattering that illusion.

In reality, mass media pundits and reporters are hired by the billionaires who control the media based on their reliability in promoting a worldview which is beneficial to the status quo upon which those billionaires have built their plutocratic empires. If those pundits and reporters were straightforward about the fact that they are biased toward the imperial status quo because they know holding that bias is how they get and keep the best jobs, nobody would believe them when they tell us that we need to be afraid of a new Official Bad Guy or new group of people, or that it’s time for a new war, or that Julian Assange is bad and dangerous, or that it makes perfect sense to ignore third parties, or that America has a real government with real elections or what have you.

Impartiality has never existed in corporate media. The only reason some people pine for the days of yore when reporters were honest and spoke truth to power is because there was no internet back then, and narratives were therefore much easier to control by the media-owning class. Impartiality in the media is an imaginary unicorn believed in by children, so it’s actually to our benefit when these plutocratic cum dumpsters are honest about what they are. Hannity should be allowed to campaign for the plutocrat-owned president, MSNBC staff should be allowed to campaign for the plutocrat-owned Democrats, and Wolf Blitzer should have “BROUGHT TO YOU BY RAYTHEON” scrawled across his forehead in red lipstick.

Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. All news media must be consumed with an acute awareness that there are extremely powerful people who have a vested interest in manipulating the way you think, perceive, act, and vote; if this isn’t at the forefront of your consciousness, your worldview will be malformed.

All mass media lackeys are just as biased and malignant as Sean Hannity; the only difference between him and the others is that at least he’s honest about it. They’re not mad at him for being biased, they’re mad at him for blowing their cover.

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Geoffrey Willett/November 7, 2018

I have to say Caitlin, you take the most extreme positions on what is really going on in the world. I myself agree with much of what you say, so I find myself just not having been tough enough on people and being real about what they do & why they do it. Talking about Hannity at FOX, you are of course correct, that all press working for all newspapers, electronic news, etc have to kowtow to owners. Even when they don’t as soon as you start talking about the military industrial complex, you lose people.

What I completely fail to understand, is how lower middle class – working class people think the republicans are there for anyone other than themselves. I think observers from outside the US, like myself, can see it more easily because our local press is less about pushing a position, than just reporting that crazy american stuff.

2/ Social program like medicare, medicaid, they see as using what could be there money, to look after the aged, the poor etc. Hence it should be dog eat dog, lose the welfare programs! No empathy to fellow countrymen.

3/ Everything else we see is secondary to those first two rules.

Example So look at infrastructure where US is falling way behind, and China is building fast trains like crazy. Why not have government build new bridges, roads, etc. They might say it works ok, so a few bridges fail, roads are poor, we don’t travel them, so it does not matter. Government wastes money, so have the government give favourable money to large companies to build the infrastructure , and make large profits form pubic purse.

Build the military, why, when one sees the disconnect most US citizens want with the world? Simple who builds the equipment that is used in a war? The mega-rich of course. You want not only a buildup of military, you need to have war to shoot lots of bullets, missiles, destroy things, buy new ones, etc.

(I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but all behaviour of the Republicans is resolutely logical when you understand them).

chucknobomb/November 7, 2018

chucknobomb/November 7, 2018

Thank god for the wave. The sock market is up. The Nancy Pelosie group will make millions! Bi/Corporate/Millionare/MIC club always wins with the D and R’s. Will Bernie stop funding wars etc as chair? F 35’s? If Pelosi is the Speaker we r phucked. Have a nice day, and wage peace and justice…

chucknobomb/November 7, 2018

D. Bruce Turton/November 7, 2018

We in Canada are supposed to have a political party of the “left”. Our local examples of the “left” in positions of power are a premier who continues the long tradition of conservative premiers shilling for oil (especially egregious in a province with the world’s lowest royalty rates for resources); and another premier granting logging rites to large tracts of forests that are the last refuge of a particular species (endangered of course!) of caribou. “Growth” is the only mantra all politicians seem to know and spout.

Ishkabibble/November 7, 2018

What do Canadian governments do when citizens freely decide to have fewer children (fewer future taxpayers), which IMO is a very good thing for Mother Earth, but absolutely fatal for the present economic system in which the vast majority of large-scale capital equipemnt is owned by a microscopic percentage of the population for their own astronomical profit? ..https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-immigration-increase-350000-1.4886546 .. The Elite and their politician slaves have decided for you that there’s gonna be “growth” whether you want it or not — come hell or high water or climate ELE.

PBS is as bad as Fox with their stable of faux liberal correspondents and commentators. Last night they were practically clapping their hands in glee every time a Democrat won a race. Some of them looked on the verge of tears when Oprah’s candidate lost.

Ishkabibble/November 7, 2018

Colleen McGuire/November 7, 2018

and Wolf Blitzer should have “BROUGHT TO YOU BY RAYTHEON” scrawled across his forehead in red lipstick.

More appropos Wolf Blitzer should have BROUGHT TO YOU BY AIPAC since he was in actual fact a former director of the Israeli lobby group, and thus it is Israel’s perspective of promoting invasions and regime change in Middle East countries that prompts Blitzerf to sell this Israeli-centric idea to Blitzers American audience.

Julius/November 7, 2018

Sean Hannity is *NOT* a journalist in the classic sense of how we might think of “journalist”. He denies being one when it fits and admits being one when it fits. BOSS Limbaugh does similar. Hannity is a shameless political hack. So, to me, no journalistic line was crossed. I don’t know why FOX NEWS thought they had to issue a statement for a non-journalist. What they should have done is barred him from televising his show from the campaign site, then the problem would’ve never come up. But, I knew that wasn’t going to happen either. For all the whining they do about the MSM being biased, they lead they way on many fronts themselves. Nice article Ms. Johnstone.

Bob D./November 7, 2018

No. Not -as- BS-spewing as Hannity, in general. Close… but no seegar… He beat the mostly false Benghazi drum to death. He endlessly repeats, like a good Catholic altarboy, the catechism that Obama gave, just handed out , millions of dollars to the Iraqis, totally failing to mention that that was their money which the US had frozen in the first place, and that it was part of the deal which froze their nuclear growth. No. Hannity is in a class of his own, well, maybe schoolmates with Rush.

Harry S Nydick/November 7, 2018

“In reality, mass media pundits and reporters are hired by the billionaires who control the media based on their reliability in promoting a worldview which is beneficial to the status quo upon which those billionaires have built their plutocratic empires.”

That is exactly what I’ve been trying to explain to people who don’t understand. It’s why Trump is right when calling the MSM fake news, but what he doesn’t explain is that it doesn’t all support the other side.

Also, I’m a bit perplexed when you connect MSNBC to the Democrats. That’s how it used to be. However, from the little I’ve seen, it seems to me that MSNBC, today, is become more corporate and more right-wing, the main exception being that lying cow, Maddow.

NBC and MSNBC are both now owned by the Roberts family, the main owners of Comcast. The are decidedly conservative, closer to the extreme right , than to the moderate. So, if anything, MSNBC is a microcosm f the greater society. We the people are kept fighting and arguing over relatively insignificant things, while the oligarchs use that fighting, like a magician’s distraction to stop us from seeing how, every day, they steal more and more of our country, our world and our freedoms.

Ash/November 7, 2018

> Also, I’m a bit perplexed when you connect MSNBC to the Democrats. That’s how it > used to be. However, from the little I’ve seen, it seems to me that MSNBC, today, is > become more corporate and more right-wing

And being corporate and right wing puts distance between MSNBC and the Democratic Party how exactly?

Stephen Sadd/November 7, 2018

Very honest & open piece! “I’m a hard left critic of US-centralized imperialism and I’d like to see the end of the western unelected power establishment before they get us all killed by war or ecocide;..” Shhh, your not supposed to the truth! I like it!

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